


I know (but I am not resigned)

by Skoll



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Children, Dreams, F/M, Fear, Insanity, Love, Mal Was Right, Rescue, Totems, Uncertain reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-22
Updated: 2011-09-22
Packaged: 2017-10-23 22:45:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/255902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skoll/pseuds/Skoll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dom thinks that they have woken.  Mal knows better, and it terrifies her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I know (but I am not resigned)

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this is taken from Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem "Dirge Without Music."

Mal knows her husband has gone insane. She knows, and it frightens her.

It is not an uncommon thing, her Dom's illness. Many in the dreaming profession suffer from it; she knows this too. Still, knowing a thing and seeing it happen to someone she loves are very different things. When other dreamers lose track of their own reality, when there are—accidents, Mal pities them, and she grieves, and she sits a very long while in her beautiful house with her children running about her and reminds herself that she still remembers. Now that it is Dom who cannot see the truth, though, Mal does not have room for pity. Mal does not know what she feels, but she wishes she could stop feeling it. There is too much room in her for fear, now.

Dom thinks that she is in shock, and maybe she is, but it is not for the reasons he thinks. Mal knows the truth, as Dom does not, because she has her top. Dom's resistance to taking a totem had been endearing, as Mal found most things about him to be, but slightly irritating, until this moment came. He always said that he had her, that he would trust her to tell him the truth, but he won't. He's been looking away from her top whenever she spins it, telling her that he sees it fall when plain as day she sees that it is spinning, always spinning. When she tells him this is a dream, he looks worried. When she says they need to wake up, his eyes go very wide, and he talks to her very softly, as though she is the one who refuses to see the truth.

Mal knows, though. She does not know how many layers down they are now, it dizzies her to even think about, but she does know they are dreaming. She knows because Dom led her by the hand to rusting railroad tracks, and laid down beside her, and told her they would wake up from limbo, that she must trust him. She knows because the train never came. Mal lay down on the railroad in limbo and fell asleep, and opened her eyes here, in this parody of life. She would remember being struck by a train, and if she did not die, the only way they could have gone was down.

They had thought they were as low as they could drop in dreams, and now they have sunk further. Mal worries for them. Dreams cannot be stable this far down. She can see the places where this world is tearing apart, even if Dom cannot. She knows this house, this life, these—these projections that take the shape of her children, all this is a dream.

And some part of her worries. She does not know how time will pass, here; no one has gone so far in dreams before. What if, here, time passes more quickly than it does above? What if her children—her James, and her Phillipa, who she misses so dearly—come inside from their play and find their parents laying on the floor, still as the dead and barely breathing? What if—what if they shake her, and she does not wake? She cannot do that to her children. She cannot leave them behind for this false life, and she cannot inflict the horror of finding her that way upon them. Whatever they do, they must do it soon.

There will be no kick, Mal knows. Maybe it cannot reach them here, so far into their own minds. Maybe, through some mechanical error, there was never a kick at all. Mal knows, though, that the kick is long overdue. If they are to wake, they must wake themselves. They must do it soon, they must, but Dom cannot see and Mal is so, so frightened.

He will not come with her. He loves her, but he will not let himself see. There is something he has forgotten in all their time dreaming, some reminder of what is reality and what is dream, and he will not let himself remember. He will not let himself know.

Mal will not leave them to play in shadows and leave their children, their life, behind.

She will leave him no choice. It is the only thing she can think of. She must wake them, and she must do it soon, and so she writes letters and smiles at psychiatrists and plans.

There is room in Mal's heart for guilt, it seems, but she lets her fear swallow it. Dom will thank her, when they wake.

This time, Mal will bring the train.


End file.
